Two teams of UC San Diego undergraduate bioengineering students won Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) awards from the National Institutes of Health. Source: UC San Diego

Scientists are working on a new approach to treating kidney failure that could one day free people from needing dialysis or having to take harsh drugs to suppress their immune system after a transplant. Source: UC San Francisco/Science Daily

Information about a recent variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus including information about the impact on COVID-19 tests. Source: CBS News

Now in its 12th year, the DEBUT Challenge calls on teams of undergraduate students to produce technological solutions to a broad spectrum of unmet health needs.

A new study has demonstrated the ability for gene therapy to repair neural connections for those with the rare genetic brain disorder known as Hurler syndrome. Source: University of Minnesota Medical School/Science Daily

Scientists have trained a computer to analyze the brain activity of someone listening to music and, based only on those neuronal patterns, recreate the song.

The research produced a recognizable, if muffled version of Pink Floyd’s 1979 song, “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1).”

Before this, researchers had figured out how to use brain activity to reconstruct music with similar features to the song someone was listening to. Now, “you can actually listen to the brain and restore the music that person heard,” said Gerwin Schalk, a neuroscientist who directs a research lab in Shanghai and collected data for this study. Source: New York Times

The guitar chords echo strangely, as if emanating from the bottom of a well. The singer’s voice is also garbled, his lyrics barely intelligible. Nevertheless, if you know what’s coming, the song is recognizable: “All in all, it was just a brick in the wall.” It’s a snippet of “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” from the album “The Wall,” which was a smash hit in 1979 for the U.K. rock band Pink Floyd. And it was re-created from brain recordings from people who listened to it. The reconstructed tune provides new insights into where in the brain music is processed. Source: Science

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have used ultrasound to nudge rodents into an energy-conserving state that mirrors a natural, hibernation-like survival mechanism known as torpor. The technique could help buy precious time for patients in critical care.

PALISADE-X aims to provide the security necessary to study life-threatening medical issues without violating patient privacy.